Modder Spotlight: Interview with BlackSheep Modding

We would like to introduce you to another part of our modding community: BlackSheep Modding. The 12-strong, international team has been creating mods for Farming Simulator since 2013. We sat down with them and asked them a few questions!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

BlackSheep Modding was created in 2013 by Fred with the desire to revolutionize the Farming Simulator immersion on consoles. Very quickly the team grew with newcomers from many backgrounds: Canada, USA, Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands and all ages to share our ideas and desires from all over the world.

Our team of 12 people includes modders, community managers for English and German, a French speaking social manager, and of course our essential team of 7 testers led by our friend Farmer1602. The team is also in charge of converting our mods from older releases to the new ones.

The whole team contributes their skills to create mods and maps for Farming Simulator in our spare time to make the game even more immersive and versatile, especially for console players.

Thanks to the ever-growing community we currently have over 90 million downloads on the official mod portal "ModHub" where we gladly share our work.

We also have the pleasure to share and exchange with our great community through Facebook which gathers more than 56,000 followers or via our discord where we eagerly talk about ideas with everyone. With some of the people who have been following us for all these years and some of whom represent us on social media we have built real friendships.

Oh, that sounds lovely. Why did you decide to work with Farming Simulator 22?

We are all real fans of the game since FS 2008 and it was obvious that we wanted to make the game even more customizable and thanks to all the new features that this version brought we can push the simulation and gameplay even further. To be honest modding is more than a passion and we don't know when to stop doing it. 

Talking about enthusiasm - what does Farming Simulator mean to you?

It is a passion above all: the joy of coming home from work in the evening and sitting quietly to make some bales and store them (which I, Fred, prefer to do in the game).

Most members of the team are from the countryside and for some even farmers in real life. We all dreamed of bringing our farm toys to life, at least most of us did! Farming Simulator allows us to do that. 

BlackSheep Moddings goal: bringing farm toys to life 

Interesting point of view. So, how do you decide what you want to create? Can you talk us through your creation and design process?

Our goal is to bring something new to the consoles. Often we have specific ideas that come to mind from playing or just seeing in real life.

We do work together with some brands and some Youtubers, who dream to see their machines or farms represented in Farming Simulator.

Then we start to create the 3d and textures with all the info that have been collected so that it matches the requirements of the game. Then I export it into a “I3d”-format. The hard work of making the mod functional starts here.

Once the mod is finished it is send to internal testing, where it is tested from top to bottom with test reports for each point. Corrections are made as the tests progress until the final test before sending to the Modhub. 

So, you said, you are quite in touch with your community. How do they influence what you create?

The requests and ideas of the community are very important. For example, we have a post on our discord for community requests. We also listen a lot to the community on map or mod improvements, and as we are all equally gamers we are well aware that we all want to have our own little life in the game.

And what about your personal taste? Do you have a favorite piece of equipment?

By far the equipment of the Goweil DLC! I'm a big fan of baling.

Last but not least: What tip would you give a new player?

I would advise the new player to start with the tutorials integrated in the game and the tutorials of the "Farming Simulator Academy", in order not to be lost in the game and give up directly. Then, when you feel more comfortable, start with some mods (of course, you should use the mods from the Modhub for PC/MAC players, because they are guaranteed to be of good quality) in order to customize your game

Finally, don't hesitate to ask for advice or join an FS community like the official Giants Software forum or an FS Discord server or a community like ours.

This interview was first published in the official Farming Simulator Magazine.